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In these moments, says Helm, he did not see any bright light that he wanted to step into, as we know it from films or stories.
Instead, people appeared to him who are important to him.
Maybe, says Helm, that's why he's still alive.
The first time he was a kid.
It was winter, and Helm glided across a pond on an ice floe like a raft.
The floe broke, Helm fell into the water.
When he was pulled down, he had to think of his mother, says Helm.
How angry she would be if she saw his wet clothes.
The thought of her made him paddle faster;
Friends saved him with sticks.
The second time was a few weeks ago, on September 21st.
That Monday around 5:30 p.m., Helm fetched his bike from the tool shed in his garden.
He was going on a little bike ride, he said to his wife Christel.
He'll be back soon.
Helm lives in Isernhagen near Hanover.
It looks like people who have never been to Lower Saxony imagine Lower Saxony: flat land, lots of polluted willows, one beet field borders on the next.
Helm cycled to a place where the A 7 crosses a small river, the Wietze.
At this point the Wietze flows through a concrete underpass, the ceiling of which is so low that an adult can just stand under it.
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